Hidden gems found, thanks to online radio

July 26th, 2011 | By Edwin

I was sprinting to my car in the morning.

I know what the wrong side of the universe looks like – all alien beings must be late and hurried there. I was forced to skip breakfast and was already feeling the effects of my low blood sugar with each roar of my car’s engine. As I was power-walking in the parking lot, I felt that my pocket was unusually light this morning.

My iPod is at home.

Luckily, with the trend of Web 2.0 everything, a delivered breakfast burrito and some interesting online radio choices fixed my morning right up.

I will be frank and say that I believe 99% of the radio station out there sucks. I don’t even think my car radio quite works correctly (one of the downsides of installing your own car audio system) – this is of little loss to me because the annoying commercials, low sound quality, and the fact that radio playlists never seem to play exactly what I want irritates me to no end. Don’t even get me started on the songs they choose to play either.

My first taste of online radio was surprisingly great, and refreshing. I stumbled upon a radio station on Live365 that played extremely listenable and varied music, ranging from old school to Afrocentric to forgotten favorites. It felt like someone who knew what he was doing was playing the songs, as opposed to a media pawn or a statistics driven robot. Here is an example playlist:

A Tribe Called Quest – Like It Like That (great Afrocentric old school)
Fatlip – What’s Up Fatlip (Fatlip, from the Pharcyde,  released a solo album in 2005 that I had no idea about. )
Afu-Ra – God of Rap (very overlooked old school artist)
Grand Puba - Two Thousand, Amazing (see above)
Canibus – Second Round K.O. (one of the first, best battle rappers in the game)
Outkast - Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (one of the Foundations of southern rap, for you Wayne/T.I. junkies out there)
The Fugees – Vocab (A marriage of reggae, hip-hop, and soul earning  unadulterated mainstream and critical praise? Never before done!)
Kanye West – Get ‘em High (a lost gem among Kanye’s more popular songs, features Kanye, Common, and Talib Kweli going at it hard)
Rakim - Been a Long Time (old school legend)
DJ Honda – Straight Talk from NY (surprising find on a radio station)

Has anybody else had a good experience with online radio? Any suggestions?

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